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EVERT AUGUSTUS DUYCKINCK 



LIFE, WRITINGS AND INFLUENCE. 



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BY 



SAMUEL OSGrOOD, D.D., LL.D 




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EVERT AUGUSTUS DUYCKINCK, 



LIFE, WRITINGS AND INFLUENCE. 



M Mtmoiv 



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SAMUEL OSGOOD, D.D., LL.D. 



Reprinted from The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 

for April, 1879. 



BOSTON : 

DAVID CLAPP & SON, PRINTERS. 

564 "Washington Street. 

187 9. 




> 



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EYEET AUGUSTUS DUYOKINOK. 

HIS LIFE, WHITINGS AND INFLUENCE. 



IN drawing up tliis memoir of a prominent scholar and citizen of 
New York for a New England magazine, it is easiest and best 
to write from the given point of view, and to treat the life and ser- 
vice of Evert Augustus Duyckinck as they appear to a New Eng- 
land man who was his neighbor in New York for nearly thirty 
years. The facts of his career are already well known ; and if a 
full and able and affectionate memorial is needed, the wisest course 
would be to transfer to these columns the admirable paper of Wil- 
liam Allen Butler, read before the New York Historical Society at 
the January meeting. That paper at once allows us to be assured 
of knowing well Mr. Duyckinck's personal career and animating 
purpose, and enables us to go beyond the author's own plan, and to 
consider his friend's connection with history and literature during the 
important period in which he lived from 1816 to 1878. 

I went to live in New York in the October of 1849, and soon 
made his acquaintance, as a neighbor and friend of letters. His 
home had been almost from the time of his marriage in 1840 at No. 
20 Clinton Place, the home from which his body was borne last 
August to St. Mark's Church for the funeral service. Clinton Place, 
when I first knew him there, was a conspicuous and central resort 
of society, and many of its residents were distinguished for wealth 
and ftishion, but he had at the beginning the same simple dignity 
and choice taste that he kept to the last, long after that gay street 
had been so far given over to business and boarding houses. Mr. 
Duyckinck was then thirty-three years old, and he had already made 
his mark in literature, as contributor to the New York Review and 
other publications, and as editor of the Literary World, which he 
began to edit in 1847. 



New York was then in a transition state and just entering upon 
the new cosmopolitan era which was in some respects a^ matter of 
disappointment as well as of pride to men who were, like Duyck- 
inck, born in the old provincial New York which ended with the 
completion of the Erie Canal and the virtual annexation of the great 
West in 1825, and who had grown up in what may be called the 
middle ao^e of New York, from 1826 to 1850, durlno^ which the 
city had become the business metropolis of the country. The third 
stage of growth was a little too fast and too far for the comfort of 
many of the old residents, and when, in 1850, the Knickerbocker 
city, proud of her Croton water, her great daily papers, and her 
extending railways, established her own line of steamers to Europe, 
and started her own fleets to the Golden Gate of California, the fear 
was expressed that the new city was outgrowing her history and its 
landmarks, and falling into the hands of a new multitude, most of 
whose half million of people knew little and cared less for the old 
fsithers of Manhattan. Mr. Duyckinck had much of the old fash- 
ioned sentiment, yet he kept up with the new progress, and at heart 
he was quite modern in his love of liberality in literature and. poli- 
tics as well as in rello'ion. 

It gives his position and career a certain definlteness to indicate 
his place and associations during the forming period of his career. 
His father. Evert Duyckinck, who was for about forty years a book- 
seller, and died in 1833, had his house at No. 9 Old Slip, and his 
store adjoined it in Water Street in the rear, far down town in 
Old New York ; and there too, not far distant, was Columbia College, 
in College Place, at its intersection by Park Place, where the 
son Evert received his academical education, and became a 
graduate of 1835. He afterwards lived in the new quarter 
which the city occupied in its great start from its old home that 
began about the year 1826, the year when St. Thomas Church, 
which he afterwards attended, was built, at the corner of Broadway 
and Houston Street, and the congregation since known by the name 
of the Church of the Messiah, settled down at the corner of Prince 
and Mercer Streets near by. In 1849 he still worshipped at St. 
Thomas Church, although population was crowding upward, and 
Ascension Church was consecrated in Fifth Avenue In 1841, and 
Grace Church in Broadway, corner of Tenth Street, in 1846. My 
own ministry was for fifteen years within a stone's throw from his 
house (1849 — 1864), in the Church of the Messiah, which was 
consecrated in 1839, and abandoned for a more favorable site in 
1864. No eyes watched more carefully than his the astonishing 
growth of the city since it began to pass upwards towards the Har- 
lem river with such speed and grandeur ; and the fact that he chose 
for the resting-place of his books the Lenox Library, so far up and 
midway in the Hue of the Central Park, is proof that this loyal 
Knickerbocker had no churlish quarrel with the spirit of the nine- 



teenth century. The New York of 1849, when I first knew him, 
had some treasures which were not possessed by the magnificent 
city which he left in 1878. Among his associates then were Irv- 
ing, Cooper, Halleck, Bryant, Charles King and William Kent, 
while new residents of high name and promise with George Ban- 
croft at their head were^ enriching the growing metropolis with their 
culture and their society. It is not well to forget that Dr. William 
Adams had been in the Broome St. Presbyterian Church since 1834, 
that Dr. H. W. Bellows, then in his Broadway Church, had been 
over his parish since 1839^ that Dr. E. H. Chapin had been in his 
Murray Street Church for a year, and Dr. Bethune, whose stout 
heart beat like a trip-hammer, could be felt from his pulpit in Brook- 
lyn, to which he came from Philadelphia in 1849. 

I. There is much interest in tracing out the roots of a life so 
characteristic as Mr. Duyckinck's, and so closely connected with 
the history of New York and the development of American litera- 
ture. We ask, therefore, what were the facts of blood and breed- 
ing that made him what he was and enabled him to do what he did. 

We must not forget what he never forgot, yet never obtruded, 
that he was of Dutch lineage, and that his family can be traced 
back to the founders of New Amsterdam. We are not told what 
relation was borne to his race by the Evert Duyckinck, one of the 
little Dutch garrison at Hartford, in 1640, who while sowing grain 
was struck "a hole in his head with a sticke, soe that the blood ran 
down very strongly," but we do kjiow that his ancestor Evert 
Duyckinck married Hendricke Simons, Sept. 9, 1646, and that the 
fourth Evert married Harriet June, Oct. 15, 1814, and in 1816, 
November 23, Evert Augustus was born, and seven years after- 
wards George Long, his brother and helper, was born October 17, 
1823. Without going far into Dutch antiquities, a thoughtful 
student of history cannot but look upon a cultivated, genial, liberal, 
earnest and devout man like Evert Augustus Duyckinck, in connec- 
tion with his race, and especially in contrast with the traits of theo- 
logical rigidity so characteristic of its dominant powers. Before the 
island of Manhattan was boudit from the natives in 1626, and the 
first governor Minuit arrived, the rigid Calvinistic party had tri- 
umphed over the Arminians or Remonstrants, Olden Barneveldt had 
been executed and Hugo Grotius had found safety in exile. When 
we ask for specific representatives of the civic wisdom and the gene- 
rous theology of those Dutch martyrs among the magnates of New 
Amsterdam, from 1626 to 1664, the reply is not easy or satisfac- 
tory ; yet the Remonstrant spirit must have been there, and it has 
shown itself in the whole subsequent history of the Dutch Ameri- 
can race, and it has come to light conspicuously, like the fountain 
Arethusa of old, that reappeared in a distant river. Mr. Duyck- 
inck's visit to the monument of Grotius in the new Kirk at Delft, 



his birth-place, in 1839, with his associates Bleecker and Beekman, 
is a good illustration of the survival of the essential spjrit of that 
great jurist, moralist and theologian, after a quarter of a thousand 
years since his exile. Verplanck was also an admirer and student 
of Grotius, and the friendly relation which has existed for so many 
years between the Episcopal Church to which he belonged, and the 
Dutch Reformed Church which came so near to it in orthodox con- 
servatism, and diifered* so far from it in Calvinistic dogmatism, 
illustrates the Remonstrant leanings of many men who came of the 
old Dutch race in America. The recer^ anniversary of the found- 
ino" of the Dutch Reformed Churcli here in 1628, and the presence 
of the rector of Trinity Church, throw light not merely upon a his- 
torical fellowship, but upon a certain spiritual affinity. 

Young Duyckinck evidently sympathized more with the Remon- 
strants who fell with Barne veldt and Grotius in 1619, than with 
their adversaries who triumphed at the synod of Dort. His 
whole education combined, with his gentle, devout and loyal na- 
ture, to make him love the spirit and the worship of the Church 
of England, which was brought so near to him at home, at col- 
leo-e, and by the favorite books of his early years. There was 
apparently when he was born a certain drift away from the stern 
and ghostly old theology of the Dutch and English Puritans to more 
humanity, taste and culture in religion. The babies who made their 
appearance in the year that welcomed him to the light, may help 
out our study of the influences that attended him. In 1816 Dan- 
iel Huntington, Parke God\wn, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and 
Robert Traill Spence Lowell, with other persons of much mark, 
came into the world to illustrate the art, the social science, the civic 
wisdom and the religious life of the new generation. It is well to 
remember that two years before that date, in 1814, Motley, the 
best interpreter of Holland, and the champion of its place in uni- 
versal history, was born; and one year before it, in 1815, William 
Ellery Channing made his great protest, not for the sect that claim- 
ed him and for which he cared so little as a sect, but for the prac- 
tical basis of religion in the Divine Nature and in human character, 
a protest which makes his name precious to all who love Christianity 
and distrust human dictation. It js a fact worth recording, that 
the last sentence in Mr. Duyckinck's Diary in Holland, writ- 
ten April 7, 1839, is this: "Read this evening Channing's no- 
ble essay on the character of Fenelon, including his views on hu- 
man nature." His companion, Harmanus Bleecker, of Albany, 
appears to have been a disciple of the Massachusetts liberalism of 
the conservative school, and to have been fond of quoting Buck- 
minster and Channing in behalf of the christian principles of that 
school. 

If we examine thoughtfully the period in which Mr. Duyck- 
inck was trained for his literary career, we shall see its important 



relations with the revival of letters, or with the American Ee- 
naissance in which he was to take so conspicuous a part. Our 
American history for a hundred years has been divided into three 
equal portions, which are named severally the period of the Grand- 
fathers, 1.77G-1809 ; that of the Fathers, 1809-1842; and that of 
the Children, 1842-1876. Taking this ground, we may say that 
Duyckinck learned in the period of the fathers to do his work and 
to say his say for the children. Although he was a prolific writer 
from his youth, and we have publications of his as early as 1836, in 
a transient paper called The Literary, he began in 1840 as editor of 
the Arcturus, the serious work which in various forms he continued 
for nearly forty years to his death. To know what he was and what 
he thought at the interesting time when his mind was ripening 
for manly production, we cannot do better than to look througli the 
two manuscript volumes of his Diary in Europe, for the year from 
November, 1838, to 1839, after studying the various scholarly arti- 
cles which he previously contributed to the first two volumes of the 
New York Review in 1837 and 1838. 

Looking at him from our New England point of view, and com- 
paring his characteristic line of thought and culture with that of our 
own set of Massachusetts scholars at about the same time, we recog- 
nize the decided infiuence of the English type of literature and re- 
ligion, under the lead of Washington Irving, as distinguislied from 
the Transcendental and perhaps Germanic school of thinking, which 
is so strongly marked by the name of Ralph AValdo Emerson, whose 
name we always speak v»'ith honor, whether in agreement or dissent. 
Massachusetts and New York, years before, botli felt alike the first 
stir of the' Renaissance in the rise of the spirit of citizenship against 
the old dictum of theology and the church ; and in some respects 
the New York patriots were in advance of the men of Lexington 
and Bunker Hill, as well as more memorable contributors to tlie 
consolidated nation. New York, too, had led the way in elegant 
literature, especially in romance, history and popular essays, with 
the help of Cooper, Irving and others, whilst probably New Eng- 
land bore the palm in the culture that sliines in the forum and the 
pulpit, and could hardly find rivals to the eloquence of Webster, 
Everett and Choate, or to preachers so classic in style and so 
thoughtful in habit as the masters of the orthodox and liberal ])uritan 
pulpit of fifty years ago. Duyckinck clung closely to the old English 
standards of culture, and went stoutly for a New Y<frk scliool of let- 
ters that should be a full match at least for the rising New England 
literature. In that spirit he Avrote for the New York Review those 
fine, thoughtful articles upon George Herbert and men of that stamp, 
not in a narrow temper indeed, but rather with hearty and generous 
recognition of the new and startling school that was rising in Boston 
and Cambridge. In his travels it is plain that he had made. up his 



6 

mind, and that his path in life is clear before him, alike in his per- 
sonal rectitude and his literary and religious views and habits. 

He does not affect to be a saint in austerity, and he is willing to 
take a joke as well as make one, to see a fine play and a fine actress. 
Still he is at twenty-two a serious, devout young man, a hater of 
gloom and bigotry, but a lover of religion, rejoicing in an earnest 
sermon, an impressive worship, and apparently always ready to 
join devoutly in the Holy Communion. In Paris he thus wrote on 
the last night of the year 1838, after speaking of the profound 
sense of ignorance which the arts and learning of Europe impressed 
upon him : " The last moments of the year — that even now strikes 
as I write points upward^ and so pray it may be with me and 
mine, that when time w^ith us is latest, our thoughts may be highest. 
A Happy New Year to my friends at home, and the blessing of 
Heaven upon them. Amen." The very sentences which head his 
Diary, those ample and rich quotations from Bacon and Burton and 
Fuller, indicate well the spirit that Civries him abroad to the shrines 
of ancient wisdom and modern culture and art ; and these sayings 
from the fathers of Enoflish letters show how much his advisers dif- 
fered from those of so many young Americans of his day who went 
abroad agog for the chance to kick up their heels and wag their 
tongues and ventilate their nonsense without restraint. He carries 
the same thoughtful spirit to the end of his travels, and he thus, 
September 23, 1839, sums up his impressions of the Peculiarities 
of England: "Foot-paths by the roadside, good roads, good 
hedges, cheerful rights of way through parks and by the side of 
rivers and cultivated fields, attentions of servants at inns, punctu- 
ality and attention of coachmen, no loiterers on Sunday -about the 
doors of churches in London to see the fine women. Proper no- 
tions of economy, respect for the individual by letting him alone, 
better literary notices and theatrical criticisms. The little relics of 
old days still left — the landlady bringing in the first dish of the 
course at dinner at Stratford-upon-Avon was a delightful incident 
at the Red Horse. The custom of turning to the East in the creed 
in the churches. No mosquitoes. Per Contra — We have no 
common informers — are not law-ridden — are churchmen by choice 
under the voluntary system — have no powdered footmen. Treat an 
Irishman well." 

It may be that in comparing young Duyckinck with the choice 
young voyagera to Europe from New England in that day, he may 
have fallen behind them in a certain dnshing individualism which 
was so characteristic of Yankee independence exaggerated by tran- 
scendental reliance. Certainly there were marked traits of thought, 
brilliancy and originality in the leaders of the transcendental school 
in its palmy days, when it served the pulpit and press as well as the 
school and ballot-box, and called on every man and every woman too 
to be true to the hght and the life within them. But in the recent 



decline of that school, and in the reaction of the present generation 
from all ideal enthusiasm towards exact science and material inter- 
ests, there is a strong and growing portion of New England men 
and women who look reverently upon the hallowed faith and firm 
institutions which Duyckinck loved. Perhaps the Dean of West- 
minster, himself the youngest heart in popular theology, gave a hint, 
of his reading of the rising thought when he preached in the pulpit 
of Phillips Brooks in Trinity Church, Boston, and made a reverent 
pilgrimage to the shrine of the transcendental prophet Emerson at 
Concord. Duyckinck would have gone gladly with the Dean to 
both places, and given his adhesion to that combination of the new 
culture with the old religion. He was for years an intimate cor- 
respondent with Hawthorne, who once occupied the old Concord 
manse, and he could speak in terms of admiration of the profound 
thought and the exquisite and unique diction of Emerson. Perhaps 
his unwearied industry, with his committal of himself to long and 
laborious undertakings for publishers, kept him from winning a 
name with the new essayists in pointed and brilliant writing. As the 
case stands, we must allow, that whilst he taught a wholesome loy- 
alty to religious institutions, he might have learned a certain inspi- 
ration and freshness from the New Englanders, whom he both ad- 
mired and criticized. 

In thus reviewing his years *of preparation for his life-work, 
w^iich we may perhaps regard as closing in 1840, when he under- 
took with Cornelius Mathews the charge of Arcturus, a Monthly 
Journal of Books and Opinions, we have traced this gifted son of 
the Knickerbockers from his ancestral root and his household, social 
and academic training, to his final development for his life-work. 
We find in him the remonstrant side of the old Dutch mind in alli- 
ance with the tolerant and comprehensive spirit of the English 
Church, a cross between Hugo Grotius and Jeremy Taylor. Wash- 
ington Irving helped him greatly to carry this spirit into literature, 
and to make him in his literary departure more in sympathy wath 
the quiet and conservative temper of old English scholars than with 
the radical thinking Avhich was pressing into New York and all 
America from New England, with not a little help from Germany, 
and from Carlyle the mouth-piece of modern German thinking. 
It may be that under Duyckinck and Mathews, Arcturus w^as meant 
to be the bright and particular star of loyal New York culture, and 
that the racy, thoughtful essayist and the original and somewhat 
crotchety politician and romancer, who w^ere its editors, were under- 
stood to carry the combined lights of Irving and Cooper to their 
task. 

II. Mr. Duyckinck's years of continuous literary w^ork extend- 
ed from his return from Europe and his connection with Arcturus 
to his death, August 13, 1878 — a goodly period of nearly forty 



8 

years, years surely full of good fruit. To estimate his labors duly 
is more than we can presume now to do, alike on account of their 
number and importance, and because the materials are not now 
wholly at hand, and his careful studies of Shakspeare are waiting 
the publisher's opportunity. It is enough for us now to glance at 
,his literary career in its general bearings, and to look upon him in 
his services as editor, historian, biographer and critic. 

AVhat a procession of persons and associations rises before us as 
we think of the experience of a man who has been closely concerned 
with periodical literature in New York during the last forty years ! 
Very likely its history and philosophy have been written by some 
thoughtful theorist or some sparkling essayist, but if so we have not 
lighted upon the interesting document. Within that time the grand 
journalism, that now makes New York such a power in the world, 
virtually began. Arcturus showed its light at about the same time 
with The Tribune ; and The Literary World, which Mr. Duyckinck 
conducted for five years, ending with 1853, saw the rise of the giant 
of the monthlies. Harper's Magazine, and its rivals. 

Before there had been a sort of fatality about periodical litera- 
ture in New York ; and Boston for years had held the palm, with 
the North American lieview* which had kept its firm, though quiet 
way, since 1815, and the Christian Examiner, which succeeding the 
Christian Disciple that began in*1813, had kept its standard of 
liberal scholarship flying since 1824. If we except the Knicker- 
bocker, which began in 1832, with much of local prestige as well 
as editorial ability, and lived for about twenty-five years, and the 
Democratic Review, which lived from 1838 to 1852, the most pro- 
mising New York periodicals soon came to an end. It is not easy 
to see why it was that in a community so orthodox and theologi- 
cal, the efforts to establish a first class literary and religious periodi- 
cal so signally failed, like the Literary and Theological Eeview of 
Leonard Woods, Jr., 1833 — 1839, and the New York Eeview of 
Dr. Hawks and his associates, 1837 — 1842. But so it was, and 
the comparatively small circle of Massachusetts liberals carried their 
two pet literary and religious reviews, the North American and 
Examiner, safely through all this period of wreck to the most hope- 
ful organs of New York culture and faith. The cause of the diflf'er- 
ence was evidently not in the indifference of New York christians 
or the zeal of Boston believers, but in the fact that New Yorkers 
trusted more to fixed doctrines and institutions, whilst Boston made 
more account of new and debatable opinions ; or that New York left 
to the pulpit and the prayer book much of the task which Boston 
confided to the review. This idea is somewhat confirmed by the fact, 
that when the leading class in Boston ceased to look to their reviews 
as the organs of the dominant secularly conservative and religiously 
innovating thought, and based their hopes more upon science and 
industry, those reviews lost ground and sought refuge in New York, 



♦ 9 

where the Christian Examiner, after a few years of struggle under 
a brilliant editor, died in 1869 ; where the North American has now 
spread wings as a dashing monthly, and bears hardly a trace of its 
old critical fastidiousness. 

As standing committed to periodical journalism, mainly if not 
exclusively literary, Mr. Duyckinck and his brother must have 
watched with great interest, not without some pain, the striking 
revolution in the fortunes and the evident decline of organs of lite- 
rature purely such. The apparent triumph of New York over 
Boston was less the triumph of New York literature than of busi- 
ness and capital, and of the active national and cosmopolitan dash 
over the calm meditative life of books and study. The new great 
dailies and magazines went into every thing that interested the pub- 
lic, and carried their capital with them into news, editorials, cor- 
respondence and illustrations. May we not say that a new phi- 
losophy virtually went with the new departure of the daily and peri- 
odical press ? It was seen that life goes by will as much as by thought, 
if not more, 'and that the great thing is to know how the will of 
men and nations is moving before we can analyze their opinions or 
appreciate their theories. How the cat jumps is more important 
than how she reasons or fails to reason, and the cosmos of man and 
nature has very much of the cat in its composition, and often jumps 
without sufficient reason. Any thoughtful man who will compare 
the newspapers and monthlies of this present date with those of 
forty years ago will see what we mean by this distinction, and how 
far the discussion of books and opinions, or of ideas in general, has 
yielded to the recognition of active forces, and the dynamic view of 
man and nature has got the better or the worse of the contempla- 
tive, sentimental, and even the ideal view. 

Mr. Duyckinck, as an editor, suffered by this change. Although 
he wished to be iqi to the times, and did not churlishly reject any 
elements of the new order, he was a student of books and a critic 
of opinions and taste, with little of the dash and muscle that came 
with the coming push and progress. He also was very much of a 
recluse, and although bred to the law -he was not fond of crowds nor 
ready in debate, nor telling in ring of voice or play of gesture. He 
gave his heart and pen to his country in her great and noble strug- 
gle, but he kept out of the rush of numbers and of enthusiasm that 
so changed New York and the country when the war broke out ; 
and in some important respects he was left behind by the new and 
not wholly good and true ways of thinking and doing that came 
within the last sixteen or seventeen years. He evidently saw that 
he could not be all things, and he was determined to be himself and 
to do his own work ; and he was his own quiet, earnest, devoted, 
self, and he did his useful, good and true work to the last. 

The Literary World, which was continued by Mr. Duyckinck 
and his brother till 1853, through thirteen volumes, was in point of 
2 



10 • 

ability and character, a success, but not as a financial enterprise. 
It was high toned, learned, timely and interesting, whil^ its refined 
taste and courteous temper were not to the liking of the lovers of 
the cut and thrust style of criticism that was growing in favor. 
Mr. William Allen Butler speaks justly of its characteristics from 
his ample knowledge of the man and his writings, thus : 

" But although the Literary World was not a permanent success, the 
work done upon it was not lost. 

" There is this diiference between the failures of ventures in journalism 
and ordinary business reverses, that while the types and presses and me- 
chanical appliances by which they are cai-ried on may figure in a bankrupt- 
cy schedule as very unavailable assets, the written words to which they 
have given permanent form and expression on the printed page remain and 
become a part of the great body of literature to survive and to find their 
permanent place and value if they are intrinsically worthy of preservation. 
Many a famous or well-deserving poem, essay or article, has first seen the 
light as a contribution to some short-lived magazine or journal which may 
have served as a kind of fire-escape for the genius imperilled by its 
destruction." 

The discontinuance of the Literary World left the brothers free 
to do other literary work with their enlarged knowledge and new 
associations and facilities. In 1856 they completed the elaborate 
and valuable Cyclopaxlia of American Literature, in two volumes 
octavo, with Charles Scribner as publisher — a book which is based 
upon the idea stated in the preface : " The voice of two centuries 
of American literature may well be worth listening to." Ten years 
afterward a Supplement was added, after the death of his brother, 
bringing down the work to that date, and a new and much enlarged 
edition has recently been published under other auspices by a Phila- 
delphia house. We take from Mr. Butler's memoir the condensed 
list of Mr. Duyckinck's other works : 

"In 1856 Duyckinck edited the 'Wit and Wisdom of Sidney Smith, 
with a biographical memoir and notes.' In 1862 he undertook the task of 
preparing the letter-press for the ' National Portrait Gallery of Eminent 
Americans,' published by Messrs.' Johnson, Fry & Co., a series of biographi- 
cal sketches and portraits forming two quarto volumes. 

"This work had a very extended circulation, the number of copies sold 
having long since exceeded one hundred thousand. A contemporary 'His- 
tory of the War for the Union,' in three quarto volumes, and another ex- 
tensive work, ' Biographies of Eminent Men and Women of Europe and 
America,' were written by him for the same publishers. He also edited 
for them a ' History of the World,' in four quarto volumes, compiled chief- 
ly from the Encyclopasdia Britannica, and in great part by his son George. 
Less elaborate works were the editing, with a memoir and notes, of the 
' Poems of Philip Freneau,' the American edition of the ' Poets of the Nine- 
teenth Century,' a memorial of John Allan, the well-known Nev/ York 
book collector (printed by tlie Bradford Club), commemoration sketches of 
the Rev. Dr. Hawks, Henry T. Tuckerman and James W. Beekman, read 



11 

t^lefore the New York Historical Society and printed by it, and similar me- 
morials of John David Wolfe and Samuel G. Drake, the last named for 
the American Ethnological Society. Immediately after the death of Wash- 
ington Irving he gathered together and published in a single volume an 
interesting collection of anecdotes and traits of the great author, under the 
title of Irvingiana." 

He also wrote memorials of Solomon Alofsen, Thomas Ewbank 
and Fitz Greene Halleck. He edited a Library of Choice Reading, 
published by Yfiley & Putnam. He wrote also articles for the 
North American Review, and for leading New York journals, upon 
sulyjects of the day. He was associated with Mr. Bryant in his last 
important literary work, a popular edition of Shakspeare, in which 
Duyckinck was to do the laborious preliminary work, and Bryant 
was to give the final judgment. I well remember hearing Bryant 
speak of this labor, when in the June of 1875 I accepted his invi- 
tation to visit Kim at Roslyn for a few days, and in the words of his 
note, "the pouting lips of the straw^berries " added their persuasion 
to his. He told me that he had that year gone carefully over every 
line of Shakspeare's plays and poems, and the large body of notes 
submitted to him, and given his critical opinion of each questiona- 
ble point. In the manuscript preface he thus speaks of the division 
of labor in the enterprise : 

" Among the variations in the texts in the old copies called readings, are 
many the genuineness of which is matter of dispute among commentators. 
* * * In selecting the most authentic of this class I should not have been 
willing to rely on my own judgment and opportunity, and have, therefore, 
sought the cooperation of Mr. Duyckinck, whose studious habits of research 
and discrimination fitted him in a peculiar manner for the task. With the 
assurance of his assistance I undertook the work, and it is due to him to 
say that although every syllable of this edition has passed under my eye 
and been considered and approved by me, the preliminary labor in the re- 
vision and annotation has been performed by him." 

Mr. Butler fitly speaks in these words of the congeniality of these 
labors with the closing years of the life of this acute critic and 
accomplished scholar and thoughtful man : 

" It is pleasant to think that his last labor was one so congenial to his 
tastes. Hindered by no calls to alien or disturbing duties or rough com- 
petitions in the outer world, it was pursued in the seclusion which he loved, 
among the ample sources of aid and illustration in the books by which he 
was surrounded. From the first scene to the last he went page by page, 
line by line, through all the dramas which the world accepts under the 
name of Shakspeare, with the patient and conscientious care imposed by 
the nature of the work and his sense of duty, and, as we may well imagine, 
with something of the reverent devotion to the minutest details which a 
mediteval monk might have given to the task of illuminating the record of 
the legend of a patron saint. The labor thus delighted in was often an 
antidote to sorrow and pain, and a source of strength and comfort. He 
showed me on one occasion, with evident satisfaction, the portion of the 



12 

work lie had in hand, and to an intimate friend, in an interview near the 
close of his life, when he was suffering great pain, his patient endurance 
found relief in words supplied by the great dramatist, * 

' Come what come may, 
Time and the hour run through the roughest day.' " 

With these literary labors Mr. Duyckinck united constant ser- 
vices for the public good, and as a member and for years the Do- 
mestic Corresponding Secretary of the New York Historical Society, 
as Trustee of Columbia College, and in his connection with parish 
offices and with various movements in behalf of culture and patri- 
otism, he filled his days with good w^orks to the last. To those 
who in his later years had the privilege of seeing him quietly in the 
rear third story room of No. 20 Clinton Place, when Jiis growing 
infirmity kept him from going up and dowm stairs,^ there are cher- 
ished remembrances of the man and his words. Sometimes he was 
at work critically upon the text of Shakspeare, and again he was 
busy with his favorite bible, a polyglot, in which he was espe- 
cially fond of reading the Greek text. At times he was a great suf- 
ferer and spent whole nights without sleep, yet he was gentle and 
uncomplaining, and he told an intimate friend shortly before his 
death, that he was ready to die, and he wished to live only to save 
his wife and the mother of his children who had nil gone, the pain 
of utter loneliness. 

III. So lived and died Evert Augustus Duyckinck, and to us 
he leaves the legacy of his character and his influence. It only re- 
mains for us now to estimate in general terms the extent and value 
and bearing of that legacy. 

He certainly did a vast deal of work, and of good work, in 
those forty years, from the time when in 1836 he first w^ent into 
print in The Literary, a little magazine of college contributions, to 
his labors in 1878. Not only have we many goodly volumes from 
his pen, but he has given careful and fine distillations of the whole 
harvest of current literature, so that his pen brought not only the 
fruit of the author's own vine, but rich wine from the ripe clusters 
of many a neighboring vineyard that had come to his press. His 
Cyclopaedia of American Literature is a rich treasure, alike of 
critical study and careful selection. He and his brother have been 
blamed and even ridiculed for their large hospitality to many wa^iters 
whose fame has not survived to the present day ; yet the hospitality- 
may have nevertheless been just and valuable, and time, which 
changes reputation, does not always preserve wisdom or reward 
worth ; and moreover it is important to note the decline of pop- 
ular favor of authors, whether the cause may have been the 
author's weakness or the public's forgetfulness or folly. As a trea- 
sury of the old literature of America, the book was in its time of 
inestimable value, and they who had occasioji to use it in practical 



13 

studies are fair judges of the great labor and judicious discrimina- 
tion given to its composition. Add to this principal work his great 
store of critical papers in leading reviews, from the New York Ke- 
view and Arcturus of his earlier years to the thirteen solid volumes 
of his Literary World, and remember his careful volumes of histo- 
ry, biography and critical editing, and we have before us a library 
of no small magnitude, and one which goes well with the rich trea- 
sure of literature and art which is to stand in his name in the noble 
Lenox Library on Central Park. 

As to the quality of his work, there can be but one opinion so 
far as fineness of taste and purity of sentiment and conscientious 
labor are concerned. That he had not more of the dash and fire 
that are so essential to the new and successful writers of our day, 
we may ascribe to his temperament and to his time. His temper 
was gentle and his habit was sedentary and meditative, and to him 
Art appeared more as a ministry of beauty than as an utterance of 
force. He lived a somewhat secluded life, almost wliolly in his 
city home ; and a rustic hermit likeThoreau, who was born the year 
after him, 1817, and a dashing romancer like Dickens, who hunted 
the game for liis readers in fieffts and lanes and among thieves and 
beggars, were alike wonderful and strange to this votary of books 
and denizen of brick walls. Yet he was no ascetic, and the pressed 
flowers in his diary and his wide-awake comments upon nature and 
art, men and women, show that he was full of life at the outset ; 
and his deep, earnest eye, and his unflagging industry to the last, 
prove that the pluck of the race of Van Tromp and of Rembrandt 
had never died out of him, and that this mild scholar was at core a 
hero too. 

As to the bearing of his life and work, many things may be said, 
but one thing seems fitly uppermost. He lived at a time of the 
parting of the w\ays, when the old faith and culture were cdfled to 
struo-o-le for life witt the new materialism and worldliness. He of 
course sided with the old fiiith and culture, but he did this in a char- 
acteristic way, which we must discern in order to understand the 
drift of his career. He came forward at a time of the new depar- 
ture in Christendom, when within the body of believers there was 
to be a struggle between the new and the old order, and great strife 
arose between the historical church and the various forms of inde- 
pendent opinion and fellowship. He took sides from the beginning 
with what he regarded as the historical church, and perhaps he w^as 
something of a partizan in his conservatism among the church cham- 
pions of the New York Review, such as Francis L. Hawks, Wil- 
liam Ingraham Kip and Horatio Potter. Yet he never sided with 
the party of Formalism, and he was earnest for the union of culture 
with religion, the light and sweetness of the University with the faith 
and worship of the Church. In this respect he was of great service 
at a time when culture was in danger of being discouraged by cer- 



14 

tain church leaders and driven out into non-conforming quarters or 
secular cliques, whilst stout sticklers for antiquity united a certain 
grossness of living and habits of self-indulgence with ri^d formality 
and dogged orthodoxy. Duyckinck loved the old Enolish litera- 
ture that grew up under the combined influence of the University 
and the Church, and he did much to make the same reconciliation 
in America, especially in New York and New England, although 
what he did was not fully appreciated at the time as it is now. 

The Puritan Independents had done more for American culture 
than any other people, and Duyckinck was not blind to this fact, and 
he tried to bring the cultured side of the English church to match 
and also to modify the Puritan scholarship. As early as 1836, in 
The Literary, he was the champion of the oldTTnglisir "literature 
against the new radicalism ; and as he grew in years and wisdom, 
he aimed to unite his love for the old learning with just appreciation 
of the new thought and style, so that he became a kind of minister 
of reconciliation between the puritan and the churchman, the inde- 
pendence of the university and tlie conservatism of the church. He 
did not do this work by controversy, but by interpretation and con- 
ciliation ; and he has had much to da with the recent better under- 
standing between those two leading representatives of the English 
speaking races in America, New England and New York. In his 
Cyclopajdia of Literature he introduced the leading authors and 
thinkers of each community kindly and intelligently to each other, 
and as a critic and a neighbor, he ushered New England writers and 
scholars to the society of the Knickerbockers, perhaps not unmind- 
ful of the fact that whilst Irving the pet of New York had laughed 
them into notice, Motley the pet of Boston had written them into 
respect and honor. 

New York has had some reason to dread the rush of invading 
Yanke|s, and there are still men and women who are such sticklers 
for ola Dutch and English Gotham that they wish that no Yankee 
had ever set foot upon the banks of the Hudson.* One stately dame 
lately said as much to the writer, and did not wince when reminded 
that her distinguished husband drew his first breath in the Granite 
state, and was a New Hampshire Yankee. Only think of the pro- 
vocation from such hordes of invaders from the Yankee realm ; what 
scores of prominent politicians, from Rufus King and Samuel Os- 
good of the ancient days, to W. M. Evarts and E. D. .Morgan of 
to-day ; what companies of preachers, from Gardiner Spring and " 
Stephen H. Tyng of the old school of orthodoxy, to Drs. Washburn 
and Storrs of the new ; what marked men of the New England libe- 
rals, froraiChanning and Edward Everett and Follen and Dewey of 
the old time, to Bellows and Hep worth and Alger of the present ; 
what a power of transcendentalism in journalism and on platforms, 
since Brook Farm sent its brilliant thinkers and talkers to edit our 
newspapers and magazines, and to open the way for a new religion 



15 

under the apostle of the Masonic Hall, O. B. Frothingham. Diiyc- 
kmck saw this inroad, and perhaps suffered loss of money and read- 
ers by it, but he did not lose his temper or his catholicity. Both 
as a man of society and a critic, he was courteous to the Yankee 
invaders, and he who writes these words thanks him heartily for his 
great good will to him when a stranger and since the new abode has 
become his familiar and loved home. He grew in sweetness and 
good fellowship, and even his churchmanship became milder and 
more comprehensive, whilst not less earnest and devout. He some- 
times spoke of his satisfaction in listening to sermons that used the 
language of literature and life instead of the terms of technical the- 
ology ; and when his son, the young clergyman, died, he found that 
Christianity came nearer to him as it touched the affections and re- 
lations of his own life by presenting to him practically in his need 
the Fatherhood of God and the Sonship of Christ. His tribute to 
James W. Beekman as a devout and catholic christian of the Dutch 
Reformed and Presbyterian church, shows his own comprehensive- 
ness and his fellowship with all who love the bible and the sabbath. 

In his quiet way he did a great deal to bring the motherly, insti- 
tutional, devout and churchly spirit of New York to bear upon puri- 
tan independency, and his mental hospitality thus gained as much 
as it gave. In fact there was much in him that readily came home 
to a refined scholar or theologian of Boston or Cambridge. The 
Rev. Dr. Alexander Young and the Rev. Dr. Greenwood were men 
much akin to him in their love of the old English prose writers and 
poets, and the elder Dana and Allston were fathers of a culture that 
went before his day and won his reverence. 1[t is interesting to 
note in the January number of the New York Review of 1838, in 
his own hand writing, the initials E. A. D. over an article upon 
George Herbert, and the name of Hillard upon a review of Tal- 
fourd's Life and Letters of Charles Lamb, a review which is not 
ascribed to this accomplished man elsewhere within our knowledge. 
Thus they miet forty years ago, and their whole lives flowed together 
in the tide of refined and generous scholarslu'p, in which George S. 
Hillard lived so loyally and brought such fruits of'rich culture to his 
age and its renaissance. The editor of Spenser and the editor of Shak- 
speare worked virtually together in their lives ; and in their deaths 
they were not long divided. The new union of generous culture 
and church life in New York and Massachusetts has much to do 
with the studies which these men and their associates pursued, with 
the spiritual needs that they felt and the practical tendencies which 
they encouraged. 

Evert Augustus Duyckinck and his brother have gone, and their 
dust rests near that of Irving in a spot that proves them lovers of 
that charming man and of his attachment to the letters and the life 
of old England and to the best culture of America. We might 
well wish for more public demonstration of honor to Duyckinck's 



16 

spotless and winning life. Mr. Butler's tribute was worthy of its 
subject, yet too little notice was given to its forthcomyig, and only 
a daily paper perpetuates its careful record and discriminating and 
loving appreciation. But there is comfort in remembering how many 
and how various tributes have been paid to Duyckinck's worth, 
and in how many forms his name survives. It is well that his large 
and rich collection of books and works of art w^ill be kept together 
in his name in the stately Lenox Library, and we trust that care 
will be taken to keep together there whatever has come from his 
own fruitful pen. 

We have no Westminster Abbey with its eloquent memorials in 
America, yet our people have l:keart enough and memories enough 
to make one. These records of history and genealogy help the na- 
tion towards keeping its sacred trust of worthy and gifted men. In 
preparing this imperfect memoir, the writer is allowed by your kind- | 
ness to put one stone to the monument that is rising in memory of | 
this faithftd friend, .accomplished scholar, steadflist patriot and i 
christian man. 

NOTE. 

Much regret has been expressed because Mr. Butler's faithful and inter- | 
esting Memoir of Mr. Duyckinck before the New York Historical Society, | 
January 7, 1879, has not been published in permanent form, and on this | 
account I have been glad to make copious extracts from it in this Memoir. I 
Mr. Butler had an advantage in having his discourse follow so closely the j 
fine address of Mr. George William Curtis, of December oOth, in comme- | 
moration of the life, works and genius of Bryant. I could not refrain, in | 
some few remarks at%he time, from referring to this fact as illustrating the | 
friendly personal relations between Bryant and Duyckinck, and their | 
significance as ofiicers of the Society, in showing the close connection be- i 
tween New England and New York. It is certainly true that the New 
Year opened more sadly to many because they are no longer with us, and 
the venerable poet and the genial man of letters no longer meet us in 
society or cheer and teach us by their pen. 

The present period of our history recalls common remembrances of the 
old colony times to both communities. The Dutch Reformed Church here 
commemorated its 250di Anniversary last year, but three months after the 
celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the landing of Governor Endicott 
at Salem, Massachusetts, and the establishment of Congregationalism there. 
Next year, the arrival of Winthrd^) at Charlestown and Boston will have 
its 250th Anniversar}', and we have Winthrops here as well as there now. 
It is interesting to recall the facts, that whilst in 1626, the Dutch began to 
worship in the loft of a mill in Manhattan, the English at Plymouth, in 
1627, were found by De Rasieres worshipping in the lower story of their 
fort. The Dutch and the English alike in Europe and America have never 
wholly lost sight of each other, and Irving and Motley in different ways 
keep them in each other's mind. It is w^orth noting that the two most con- 
spicuous books on theology just now come from Holland, and whilst Van 
Oostezee represents conservative Christianity, Kuenen is the present stand- 
ard bearer of American radical religion. S. O. 

154 West 11th St., New York, 
Feb. 28, 1879. 




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